Obama called on Republicans to back EV efforts at a post-election press conference. (Source: YouTube/The White House)

In his speech Obama essentially agreed to drop plans to legislate cap and trade, an "anti-global warming" scheme that would have cost over $1T USD and cut American farmers profits by as much as 57 percent by 2035. (Source: FreePeople Blog)

He hopes that in exchange for cooperation on warming, Republicans will contribute financial support to EV makers like GM, who launches the Chevy Volt EV this year. (Source: Pablo Martinez Monsivais, AP)

President essentially agrees to drop warming cap and trade carbon legislation in exchange

Speaking
at a post-election
press conference at the White House on Wednesday, U.S.
President Barack Obama called on his political rivals the Republican
Party (also know as the GOP, short for Grand Old Party) to join him
in supporting electric vehicles. He said that while the pair
sparred on many issues, that he hoped electric vehicles would be
something that the two parties would see eye to eye on.

The
President will need GOP cooperation if he hopes to push further
grants for the EV industry. While the Democratic Party hung on
to control of the U.S. Senate, Republicans seized a majority in the
U.S. House of Representatives.

Obama is trying to sell
Republicans on his
plan to push one million electric vehicles onto U.S. streets
by 2015.

Automakers have been partially supportive of Obama's
plan. They've lauded the $5B
USD in special battery and EV technology loans and grants
that he's lavished them with. The legislation to fund these
grants did enjoy a degree of bipartisan support, with some
Republicans jumping on board.

However, $10B
USD more in proposed EV loans and grants for the EV industry
was torpedoed during President Obama's first two years in office.
Opposition came primarily from the Republican party, but also from
some fiscally conservative Democrats.

Obama tried to drum up
support for more EV grants among both parties at the conference,
stating, "There's a lot of agreement around the need to make
sure that electric cars are developed here in the United States, that
we don't fall behind other countries. That gives opportunities
for Democrats and Republicans to come together."

Automakers have asserted
that grants will be greatly helpful in ensuring that the expensive
research needed to develop electric vehicles -- a radically different
internal architecture -- moves head at a sufficient pace.

But
while they have praised the "carrot" side of Obama's EV
approach, they have noisily
criticized the "stick" side of his plans -- a proposal
to mandate a 62 mpg average light vehicle efficiency by 2025.
Automakers were forced to begrudgingly accept a 34.1
mpg mandatory fuel efficiency increase that must be reached
by 2016.

Perhaps acknowledging that he faces an uphill battle
to pass more electric vehicle legislation, Obama took an apologetic
tone about the broader bailout, stating, "[Some voters] started
looking at all this and it felt as if government was getting much
more intrusive into people's lives than they were accustomed. We
thought it was necessary, but I'm sympathetic to folks who looked at
it and said this is looking like potential overreach."

The President
acknowledged that the bill wouldn't pass the House due to Republican
opposition and argued that he only tried to push it because of the
Supreme Court decision that found greenhouse gases a danger to public
health. That decision mandates the EPA to adopt some sort of
action to fight GHG emissions in the U.S.

Obama said that
there's plenty of alternatives to cap and trade, though -- including
promoting lower-emission EVs (centrally produced power, even with
transmission losses is typically lower emissions than small internal
combustion engines). He states, "Cap and trade was just
one way of skinning the cat; it was not the only way. It was a means,
not an end. And I'm going to be looking for other means to address
this problems."

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well, not going green will reduce value of the nation, and in the end, hurt everyone. that's why he tries to go green. because it will add value to the nation / makes sure, even current values will stay existing.

To me, it seems that most "green" things that politicians push are more to appease the peasents/spread FUD/smear the competition/etc. than any actual effort to improve the environment.If my tax dollars are going to be thrown away, I'd at least like to get an awesome new jet fighter or something :)

We already have very high environmental standards in this country compared to most of the world. Pushing for a 10 percent improvement in fuel economy over TEN years is something that would work, but you can't expect linear gains, since it takes more and more effort over time to continue to see gains.

The computer field shows this very well, going from 1MHz to 2MHz to 4MHz was showing amazing growth, but look at computer chips today, where more processor cores rather than higher clock speeds has been the direction of things for the past few years since it is MUCH harder to boost clock speeds these days than to come up with ways to do more with each clock cycle. There is still room for improvement, but expecting a 3-6 percent improvement every year in fuel economy would be like saying the cost of running the government will be reduced by 3-6 percent every year for the next 10 years, it just won't happen.